Victoriano Huerta

Victoriano Huerta (22 December 1850-13 January 1916) was the President of Mexico from 1913 until 1914. Nicknamed "the Jackal", Huerta was a brutal military commander during the Mexican Revolution who rose and fall with aid from the United States.

Biography
Huerta was born in Colotlan in Jalisco to a Huichol Indian family, and he joined the military at a young age. By 1890 he was a Colonel in the Mexican Army engineers and in 1900 he crushed Yaqui rebels in the Sonora Desert, and in 1902 crushed a Yucatan Mayan rebellion. He retired from the army due to ill health in 1907 but rejoined when the Mexican Revolution began in 1910, fighting for Porfirio Diaz. When Diaz was overthrown he became the Chief-of-Staff to Francisco Madero, the leader of the revolution, but overthrew and killed Madero in 1913.

Now the President of Mexico, Huerta faced the former enemies of Madero: the communist leader Emiliano Zapata, the politician Venustiano Carranza, and the Banditos leader Pancho Villa. Huerta had US backing initially but President Woodrow Wilson became hostile to Huerta's brutal rule and in 1914 assisted the opposition in overthrowing Huerta. Traveling to Jamaica, the United Kingdom, Spain, and the United States, but in 1915 he made plans to assist the German Empire in war against the US to stop the delivery of arms to the Allied Powers fighting Germany in World War I. Huerta was arrested near the border and died after eating a dinner while under house arrest; many suspected that the Americans had poisoned his food.